


Good Night, Good Day

by Barkour



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: Domesticity, Established Relationship, M/M, Postscript
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-18
Updated: 2017-05-18
Packaged: 2018-11-02 01:05:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10933770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: A quiet conversation at the end of the day.





	Good Night, Good Day

Kamet returned to the apartment at a late hour. A candle still burned. The thin smoke moved blackly out the small, uncovered window. A mesh-covered jar of brackish water sat on the low table. 

He closed the door quietly at his back but of course Costis had heard this slightest movement in the other room and come out to greet him. 

"You aren't sleeping?"

Costis blinked. Of course he had slept. The door had woken him. A rat moving across the stairwell opposite would have woken him. Kamet said "caggi" rather than rat and Costis smiled. Perhaps his memories were fonder. 

"You were late."

"I wouldn't want to bore you," said Kamet, meaning that he would tell Costis everything. Costis, shirtless and yet somehow rumpled, nodded and gestured to Kamet to unpack the day's tools and workings so he might sit and eat some of the evening's meal. 

As Kamet put his pens away on the shelf beside the door, and beside the little clay Miras on the shelf, Costis withdrew a large, covered bowl from under the window and then another smaller bowl to serve the meal into. A loaf of bread from the cabinet and a slice of the hard, tangy cheese made for clumsy utensils, but Costis set out a spoon too.

"Have you finished the stanza? The troubling one?"

Costis was teasing. Kamet looked at him anyway. Nothing at all in Costis' look or bearing had changed.

"Naturally," said Kamet. "Why don't I tell you about it."

"Why don't you," agreed Costis, who had roused from sleep for this.

Kamet looked at him again but Costis, once roused, could stay roused for some time if he thought it right. So Kamet told him that the text had been improperly copied with too much freedom for conjugations. As a result the passage had existed seemingly outside time and particulars. It was the sort of thing that could have been glossed over as the stanza was not important, but:

"You couldn't let it go." Costis was very agreeable that night. He sat at the low table with his large arms folded before him and his shoulders loose.

Kamet, having finished the broth and the cheese, put the spoon in the bowl. "And what did you find today?"

The water smelled foully. Costis brightened.

"Tadpoles," he said. 

Kamet raised his brows. His hair had grown long enough that he thought the gesture might go unnoticed. Costis laughed.

"A fish was eating them."

"So," said Kamet. "You starved the fish."

"He had eaten enough. Look. They have a red stripe on their tails." 

He pointed to the jar and Kamet leaned close enough his nose nearly touched the glass. In the dim light he could only see that the water was very dirty.

"So you say. And in a month we'll be eating frogs for supper for a week."

"Better than caggi," suggested Costis. 

Kamet sat back. "Or you'll set them free."

Costis said, "And I found more of that sweet ragweed," and this was a far more pleasant subject. He said, "It's steeping in the pot," for the rain-pot on the roof. Kamet unfolded his legs enough to nudge at Costis' bare calf with his toes. His foot was not cold, as Roa never got cold, but Costis reached down to cradle his toes as if they were chilled. He gave them a squeeze and then he yawned. It made his handsome face crease into several lines and lumps.

Kamet yawned too. Costis gave his foot another squeeze and then he unfolded his own self to stand and gather up the dirtied things. 

"Oh, let me clean them," said Kamet with a small movement that Costis cut off with an easy and light kick in passing. Kamet rubbed at his thigh as though it had hurt. 

The last of the sitting broth, pecked with vegetables and the little meat Costis had managed to sneak in without Kamet's complaint, Costis swigged. He set the small bowl on the sill beside the larger bowl and the steady candle, and then wetted a cloth in the water jar and began to wipe out each bowl. The long plants and cured leaves that Costis gathered throughout the days and tied up to the ceiling made soft rushing sounds whenever his head brushed at them. He was too tall by far. Kamet, lulled by the quiet noise of Costis' brief work, rested his chin on his hand and closed his eyes. The strain of them faded. His head yet ached. 

"Tomorrow we should walk together," he said to Costis. "The scribe's room is too dark."

"Can't you ask for a better room?"

"That would mean bullying a priest."

Costis made a thoughtful and very dry sound. He did not elaborate on this. Kamet did not ask him to elaborate. It could mean either that Costis, who Kamet bullied daily, thought his prudence a show, or that Costis, who noticed things, understood that Kamet remained unsure of his standing in Magyar where only priests might oversee slaves who were consecrated to the temples and considered of greater import than visiting freedmen. 

Costis, who was free born, and still looked a soldier especially after clambering over every hill in Roa, and was so devout as to worship both his profession's god and his king's god, gave no guidance. He was wary of and diffident to every priest he met. 

"Anything interesting to see on the mountains?"

"They are not mountains," said Costis. He dried his hands on the second cloth and hung it over the sill. "You're strong enough to climb them easily."

"They're covered in crooked goats."

"Everything in Roa is covered in crooked goats."

"We could take a house in the hills so you can have your goats."

"You'd hate the smell," said Costis. He licked finger and thumb and pinched out the candle. 

Another light showed in the other room where the wide bed sat. Kamet, sighing, stood to his feet and stretched. Costis offered an arm. Kamet took it.

"I need the fresh air. And the light for my eyes."

"You're just tired of the temple's gardens," said Costis with some amusement. "You think they're poorly planned. You think the gardens in Attolia are better."

"I shouldn't have told you," said Kamet as they went to the other room. He undressed from his Magyar-styled outer tunic and then from the shirt beneath.

"I could see it on your face. You make that expression--" Costis drew two fingers along the inside corners of his eyes. His eyes crossed. 

"I don't look down my nose. And everyone can read your face."

"Yes, I'm easy."

"You're very agreeable tonight," said Kamet suspiciously.

"Idiot," said Costis. "I'm tired. You woke me up."

"Yes, with my heavy footsteps." He gave a significant look to the boots set in the corner of this closed room. The smell of smoke was thicker here. 

Costis laid down on the bed without much concern. His toes crooked. The one toe with the healed bent to it stuck on its nearest fellow. 

"Come to bed, Kamet," he said. It was not a command. He said it with great exasperation.

Kamet bent to blow this candle out and, through memory, he found his way to the bed in the dark and there he found Costis patiently waiting for him.


End file.
